Desire

By Pettit, Philip

If an agent is to be moved to action, then two requirements have to be fulfilled: first, the agent must possess beliefs about the way things actually are, ...

Buddhist philosophy, Indian

By Hayes, Richard P.

Buddhism was an important ingredient in the philosophical melange of the Indian subcontinent for over a millennium. From an inconspicuous beginning a few centuries before Christ, Buddhist scholasticism ...

Metaethical theories, hybrid

By Ridge, Michael; Köhler, Sebastian

Hybrid theories in metaethics hold at least one of the following theses: Moral claims express both belief-like and desire-like mental states. Moral judgments ...

Intention

By Dunn, Robert

Suppose that Kevin intends to brush up on his predicate logic, and acts on this intention, because he wants to conduct a good tutorial and he believes that ...

Belief

By Jackson, Frank; Braddon-Mitchell, David

We believe that there is coffee over there; we believe the special theory of relativity; we believe the Vice-Chancellor; and some of us believe in God. But plausibly ...

Belief

We believe that there is coffee over there; we believe the special theory of relativity; we believe the surgeon; some of us believe in God. But plausibly what ...

Daoist philosophy

By Hall, David L.; Ames, Roger T.

Early Daoist philosophy has had an incalculable influence on the development of Chinese philosophy and culture. Philosophical Daoism is often called ‘Lao–Zhuang’ philosophy, referring directly to the two ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

By Skorupski, John

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. He ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. He ...

Lacan, Jacques (1901–81)

By Pluth, Ed

Jacques Lacan, who in the mid-20th century urged psychoanalysts to ‘return to Freud’, infused psychoanalysis with ideas from structuralist linguistics and Hegelian philosophy. Feeling that psychoanalysts had both ...

Butler, Joseph (1692–1752)

By Frey, R.G.

Joseph Butler the moral philosopher is in that long line of eighteenth-century thinkers who sought to answer Thomas Hobbes on human nature and moral motivation. Following the Third ...

Alterity and identity, postmodern theories of

By Fenves, Peter

Theories of alterity and identity can be said to be ‘postmodern’ if they challenge at least two key features of modern philosophy: (1) the Cartesian attempt to secure ...

Evil

Evil actions cause grievous, deliberate, gratuitous, morally inexcusable and unjustifiable harm, and their prevalence is the most serious obstacle to our well-being. According to realistic explanations, evil actions ...

Utilitarianism

By Chappell, Tim; Crisp, Roger

Utilitarianism is a theory about rightness, according to which the only good thing is welfare (wellbeing or ‘utility’). Welfare should, in some way, be maximized, and agents are ...

Mind, philosophy of

By Jackson, Frank; Rey, Georges

‘Philosophy of mind’, and ‘philosophy of psychology’ are two terms for the same general area of philosophical inquiry: the nature of mental phenomena and their connection with behaviour ...

Mill, John Stuart (1806–73)

John Stuart Mill, Britain’s major philosopher of the nineteenth century, gave formulations of his country’s empiricist and liberal traditions of comparable importance to those of John Locke. His ...

Dennett, Daniel Clement (1942–)

By Lycan, William G.

A student of Gilbert Ryle and a connoisseur of cognitive psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology, American philosopher Daniel Dennett has urged Rylean views in the philosophy of mind, ...

Post-structuralism in the social sciences

By Gutting, Gary

Structuralism was a twentieth-century approach in various social scientific disciplines (the ‘human sciences’) that promised to put them on a solid scientific basis. The origin and model of ...

Reasons and causes

By Smith, Michael

Imagine being told that someone is doing something for a reason. Perhaps they are reading a spy novel, and we are told that their reason for doing so ...

Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939)

By Hopkins, James

Freud developed the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, one of the most influential schools of psychology and psychotherapy of the twentieth century. He established a relationship with his ...

Well-being

An individual’s well-being – or, equivalently, their welfare or quality of life – is the extent to which their life is going well for them. ...

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a theory about rightness, according to which the only good thing is welfare (well-being or ‘utility’). Welfare should, in some way, be maximized, and agents are ...

Rationality, instrumental

By Way, Jonathan

We are instrumentally rational when we take necessary and effective means to our ends, and instrumentally irrational when we fail to do so. For instance, if you decide ...

Reasons for action

By Wiland, Eric

There are many reasons for wanting to understand what reasons for action are. Moral philosophers, for instance, consider the question of whether everyone has a reason to comply ...

Aristotle (384–322 BC)

By Irwin, T.H.

Aristotle of Stagira is one of the two most important philosophers of the ancient world, and one of the four or five most important of any time or ...